


The River Flows Cold

by DorsetGirl



Category: The Frankenstein Chronicles (TV)
Genre: Gen, International Fanworks Day 2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29390982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DorsetGirl/pseuds/DorsetGirl
Summary: John Marlott always comes to the river when he's hurting.
Kudos: 1





	The River Flows Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the days immediately preceding episode 1.01

John stands at the shore again. He always comes here when he's uneasy in his mind, but it doesn't often help. He stands in the cold wind, watching the grey water slither by, and he's still uneasy in his mind, only now he's cold and wet as well.

He wishes he could act to change his life, but what would he change? 

Bring back his wife, his daughter? That can never be, they're gone from him and they can't come back. Change who he is? Become a man of the taverns, find acquaintance among those who walk the edges as he does? He thinks of it often, but hard though he tries he doesn’t have friendship in him. 

The army sustained him, but he was born to be lonely, and a year of loving Agnes has left him hollow in her absence. At times he even welcomes the syphilis because it keeps him from ever getting close to a woman again, and he deserves that estrangement from everything that is soft and kind in life.

The sky is grey today, and the water lifts the weed gently, moving it as it moved Agnes' hair. He wants to enter the water and join her and their daughter, but that is a sin, and he must live clean from now on so that when God wills it he can join them both in Heaven.

He hopes it may be soon.


End file.
